Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Rise and Functioning of Status Hierarchies

University Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

John Walden (University of Pittsburgh) is investigating the ways in which the rise of the Late Classic (AD 600-900) Maya polity of Lower Dover, Belize impacted surrounding local elite families. Scholars have increasingly come to view Classic Maya rulers as being reliant on ceremony to bring followers together, due to a lack of overt political power. In contexts where the ruling classes lack the tangible power to affect the everyday lives of their subjects, intermediate elites (those between the highest rulers and the commoner masses) often fulfill important roles as mediators between the ruling family and their followers. By identifying how the relative wealth and status and ceremonial and economic bases of power of three autonomous local elite families changed as they became co-opted by the emergent Lower Dover polity, Walden will show how incorporation impacted the agency of intermediate elites. Did the local elites lose wealth and status, and their bases of power upon incorporation into a polity? If so, this would suggest Maya rulers wielded high degrees of political, economic and ceremonial power. Conversely, if little change is apparent or the co-opted intermediate elites witness an increase in their power, then this would corroborate current perspectives envisaging ruling elites as lacking explicit political power. The approach is grounded in an anthropological perspective on the co-option of local political leaders by external powers, and consequentially offers a comparative window into contemporary foreign policy and incorporation in the developing world. The results of the study will be made accessible in Walden's dissertation, and a series of academic publications. All data will be freely available through the University of Pittsburgh Center for Comparative Archaeology. The project will form the basis for training local and international students in archaeological practice and serve to educate local Belizeans about their past through a series of outreach events, lectures and workshops. Walden will examine changes at three intermediate elite centers situated around the political capital of Lower Dover; Tutu Uitz Na, Floral Park and Barton Ramie, and include data from the commoner neighborhoods which surrounded each intermediate elite center. Understanding the wealth and quality of life of client commoners will show whether local elites favored more exploitative or communally beneficial strategies in their dealings with their subordinates, and how this changed when the rulers of Lower Dover established themselves. Comparison of possible variability between the three intermediate elite families will allow an understanding of the different factors which structured how much political power intermediate elites retained following the rise of Lower Dover. For instance, did local elites located geographically closer to Lower Dover see a more dramatic reduction in their power, or did more politically powerful local elites possess greater opportunities for negotiating their role in the new polity? Analysis of residential and ceremonial architecture and the changing proportions of utilitarian, high value and ritual items within these structures will show how inequality, patterns of production, consumption and ritual activity changed as the polity rose. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.